A multitrial experiment examined the availability-accessibility hypothesis concerning recall for meaningful words. Ten subjects were assigned to one of four cueing conditions: cued learning, cued recall; cued learning, noncued recall; noncued learning, cued recall; and noncued learning, noncued recall. The stimuli were 40 meaningful words, each from a different category of either high or low taxonomic frequency. Trial 1 recall demonstrated that cued recall was significantly more effective than noncued recall and high taxonomic frequency words were more frequently recalled than low taxonomic frequency words. A trend analysis of the six trials showed similar results.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BattigW. F.MontagueW. E.Category norms for verbal items in 56 categories: A replication and extension of the Connecticut norms. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1969, 80, No. 3, Part 2, 1–46.
2.
BrownJ.Some tests of the decay theory of immediate memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1958, 10, 12–21.
3.
MeltonA. W.Implications of short-term memory for a general theory of memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1963, 2, 1–21.
4.
PattersonK.Some characteristics of retrieval limitation in long-term-memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1972, 11, 685–691.
5.
TulvingE.PearlstoneZ.Availability versus accessibility of information in memory for words. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1966, 5, 381–391.
6.
WoodG.Category names as cues for the recall of category instances. Psychonomic Science, 1967, 9, 323–324.
